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Written by Michael Z Williamson

Created: 17 September 2013

From comments in another thread, regarding, "But the commanders know better than you, and don't want troops armed when they have no need of a weapon":

Retired military. My service is a matter of public record on my site, Wikipedia, and the dozens of people on Baen's Bar who've met me personally.

A rational person would observe that the military members at WNY did, in fact, need weapons this morning, and did not have them.

Will there be potential incidents if troops are armed all the time? Likely. Those have to be balanced against ongoing, increasing threats.

It seems unlikely there'd be more violence at a stateside base, than in the war zone where everyone is under severe stress. The number of incidents there is few. So we can expect there to be fewer here.

There could be some incidents of weapon loss or theft, but the cost/benefit analysis makes those really unimportant overall. They'd be less significant than losses from police evidence lockers.

Keep in mind all those troops and personnel are unarmed from home to duty and back again. A simple surveillance will provide all kinds of terror targets, as was done in Europe during the Cold War.

Also, it is impossible to secure against such threats. You cannot disassemble and cavity search every vehicle and person entering. Any response must contain a reactive component. A reactive component requires armed force in the immediate area to the hostile.

If only the military could find a large number of people trained with weapons to be on hand to respond...

"But Mike, we've kept making ourselves more and more helpless, and we're still getting attacked!  What can we do?"

"Stop being pussies."

Sarcasm aside, if you can't trust an officer or NCO with a sidearm, as every Barney Fife cop in America is trusted, then either we need better recruiting standards, or you need therapy. I'm betting on the latter.

If there were statistically an armed NCO in every duty section, there'd be a lot less of this, because the shooters don't want to die until AFTER the make their statement.

Consider also that anyone working on base, or living off base, is guaranteed to be defenseless from home to gate and back.  Easy pickings for some future terrorist (and this is an easy prediction, because it happened several times in Europe during the Cold War).

An "Armed Force" actually needs to be, you know, an ARMED FORCE. 

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Written by Michael Z Williamson

Created: 16 September 2013

"Guns can kill" is a completely dishonest argument. Alcohol kills, and people under the influence of alcohol kill, more people than guns, even with the laws on the books. Alcohol serves no valid non-medical purpose in society. If it's about saving life, we should be pushing to ban booze...which was tried disastrously.

AIDS spread by gay men kills more people than guns. Would it be unreasonable to require blood tests before engaging in such behavior?  Nor does society as a whole particularly benefit from unsafe sex outside of wedlock.

"People die" is a completely invalid and dishonest justification for restricting rights, and SCOTUS says so. Such arguments were tried for booze, for porn, for AIDS, for any number of things.

So I won't even entertain such arguments.

However, I can argue that if we assume that all guns magically disappeared, and none of those dead were killed in some other fashion, it would still take 1000 years of so-called "gun deaths" to equal the body count the Nazis managed in under a decade.

So against the possibility that the US just might be ruled by some murderous nutjob some time in the next 750 years, I will not only keep all my guns, I will seek more, and I will seek bigger guns that shoot more bullets.

For the children.

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Written by Michael Z Williamson

Created: 11 September 2013

A friend asked about the site I have screenshotted here:

Someone asked me about a page on this site:

http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/fema-preparing-major-event-region-iii/#

Here is my response:

Complete bullshit.  MRE orders are standard for keeping on hand for disasters, and after 7 years get rotated so need regular replacement.  Fiscal year starts 1 Oct, so it's a handy time to use unused budget.  I've heard of no such activity in the Guard with a sudden schedule, and it's a regular requirement anyway.  Most Europeans speak English. 380K UN pussies with no logistics train would get exterminated in about a week, even if they were coming over, and how much English can they learn in that time?  I'm quite sure troops have leave in that time, as I'm scheduled for an event in Germany and I know several who are on the list to attend.

BTW, if you are in the Guard or active duty and can help debunk this crap, please email me.

Attached is an image of what they posted.  Feel free to bet me it will happen. I need the money.

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Written by Michael Z Williamson

Created: 09 September 2013

For those not following me elsewhere, these are hand made by me, finished and for sale.  Two sold since last night, so if you like one, say so, and we can work out payment arrangements:

 http://www.sharppointythings.com/knives.html

And these are antique, rare, or otherwise. Same deal:

http://www.sharppointythings.com/antiques.html